The Surgery
I am not sure exactly when I heard from my wife but my friend Goran had arranged with an Orthopedic Surgeon he knew to have me transferred to his Clinic and he would do the surgery. That morning of the second day I got moved to a much smaller room with only a few men who were pretty quiet and it was much more relaxing and I started to think perhaps I would survive. After a very quiet night, in the morning, they loaded me on a gurney and drove me a few blocks to the Orthopedic Clinic.
I would spend one day and night there knowing I was going to get surgery the next day. They put in a catheter which I had never had and was just a little weird going in. In the middle of the night I woke up to from a dream that I was pissing everywhere in some room only to find when I woke that the hose connecting the catheter to the bag had come undone and I was laying in a pool of pee in my bed. I rolled to the floor and tried to wipe it up with my sheets when finally the nurses came in and helped getting mad at me for getting out of bed.
The next morning I had my first alcohol bath and got ready for surgery. I had an epidural which took the anesthesiologist a few times to get in the right spot, more of a bother than painful. After that, I remember him asking do I want to be awake or asleep and I laughed to myself does anyone ever choose awake. The next thing I knew I was looking a X-rays of my ankle with the screws and rods attached as the Surgeon said everything looks good and they rolled me out.
Perhaps the most boring 24 hours of my life followed. In the US you go to surgical recovery for an hour or two until you wake up. Here in Serbia, it is all day. I have no idea what they pumped into me but I always had an IV bag. I am sure there were a lot of antibiotics. I had no phone, there was no TV, and all I could do was lay flat in bed. You lose all track of time and space, not having a clue as to what is happening in life.
The next morning they moved me back to a room for the rest of my stay.
(I just want to say and make a point that while the situation was so different than an American hospital, the staff could not have been nicer. In the end, I got very good care from highly competent individuals including the doctors, nurses and the support staff)